The Lee lido: Build it and they will swim in it
Marathon swimmer Niall Kenny has spent the last three years working on his quest to get a lido - an outdoor pool - in the River Lee. It’s taking shape.
Niall Kenny likes to swim. Often and a lot.
In pools, rivers, reservoirs, lakes, the ocean. Presented with a body of water he’ll probably submerge himself in it. Maybe, for some people the pull of the water never leaves them, even if we, or the primordial version of ourselves, have long since left the water.
And so one wet Saturday morning this past September Niall made a trip into the city centre, to that blue and white port of Cork sign where the two channels of the Lee meet, before pushing on and out down the Marina and into the lower harbour.
On a rain-filled morning Niall slipped into the Lee, and then unceremoniously started in on a swim that would continue for three hours and thirty-six minutes and 16 kilometers (10 miles) before he eventually emerged at the town where the Titanic made its last port of call on its maiden voyage: Cobh.
Along the way, it’s almost certain that as Niall settled into the long, repetitive slog of raising one arm and then the other over his head and back through the water slowly and methodically propelling himself down the harbour that he got to thinking about something that has consumed him for the past three years: how do you get a 50 meter lido, essentially an outdoor pool, in Cork?
Like the utilitarian London Fields Lido. Or the magnificent Piscine du Rhône where the rivers Rhone and the Saone meet in France’s third biggest city, or the infinitely Instagrammable Wylie's Baths, a tidal pool in the eastern suburbs of Sydney.
Or even The Lee Baths that were resigned to history only a generation ago. Because lidos, and the job at hand, of swimming his way down to Cobh, is what drives Niall Kenny.
The outdoor swimmer
You might have noticed that swimming has featured a bit on the pages of Tripe+Drisheen lately. Last month, Ellie wrote about the mammoth and marathon swim Vanessa Daws undertook at the beginning of October when she went on a non-stop swim around the pool in Midleton College. That lasted 30 hours. And Niall, of course, popped down to offer his support.
Until I talked with Niall, I did not know that the Cork-Cobh swim is a thing. John Earls did the swim in 1969, which was officially recorded. Years went by before swimmers in Cork started the swim again (and recording the times and distances). Since 2009, around 100 swimmers have completed the swim. This year was Niall’s first time.
“It was a lovely day. There was a bit of rain, but I was going to be wet anyway,” Niall says with his trademark candour. There was a support crew out trailing behind him as the swim had to be adjudicated before it would make it into the books of the Irish Long Distance Swimming Association’s records.
Coming after a few 12 and 13 kilometre swims he had undertaken during the summer, the Cork to Cobh swim was Niall’s longest to date. He timed the swim well. The previous week Taoiseach Micheál Martin was in Cobh to officially open a new pumping station which connects thousands of homes in the lower harbour to a new treatment centre in Cork Dockyard. Up until then raw sewage was still being pumped into the lower harbour via 19 outflow pipes.
If, as Niall envisions one day that Cork will have a lido in the harbour, then removing raw sewage from the water is a fundamental first thing to get right.
The way things stand
In Niall’s campaign of “banging on doors” to get a lido into the Lee, plans are probably still somewhere well before the halfway mark. Niall says there’s about six sites on the list and the next step is for Cork City Council to carry out site feasibility studies, and whittle that down to three.
“Hopefully by January (2022) we’ll have a site allocated that we can sit down and sort out what would work best for that site."
Of the six sites, Niall would favour putting the outdoor pool in the river along the Lee Fields, back near where the baths were. That’s less to do with nostalgia, and more to with selfish reasons.
“I live out that side of the city,” he says, with a laugh.
“Realistically, to make it a viable opportunity for the city overall, I would pick Kennedy Quay or the Marina for maximum use and access.”
Kennedy Quay is part of the so-called brown site all along the old docks which begins just below City Hall and reaches all the way down to the Marina. Under plans outlined earlier this year the government is going to spend north of €350 million redeveloping the area which could eventually be home to 25,000 people.
And quite possibly a lido.
The Docklands has the potential to be the most transformative new region in generations in Cork city, so there’s a tension between getting it done quickly and getting it right.
What would a lido on the Lee look like?
Niall’s plan for a lido is expansive. Think swimming and lifestyle.
“Ideally we are looking for a 50 meter pool,” Niall says. Currently, there are only four 50 meter pools in Ireland - three in Dublin and one in Limerick.
Niall says that with a 50 meter pool that was eight or ten lanes wide, it would be able to accommodate sports such as water polo.
“I would hope they have a kids pool along side it,” Niall says, adding that ideally it would be able to accommodate space for yoga and also an outdoor gym.
“I wouldn’t say it would be quite Venice Beech where you have your muscle men, but I think you have to provide other services.”
And yes, showers, changing rooms, cycle racks and coffee docks would also feature.
“All of that brings in community and investment.” And tourists.
The way Niall sees it, there’s ample opportunity for the council to make a return on their investment, which brings us to the question of cost.
Money
Niall is a lot of things - positive, humorous, serious - but you probably wouldn’t add naive to that list. He’s a sales director for AB Sales, based in Cork, and is also a board member of Cork Chamber, a lobby group who have their ear to the ground on how business gets done across the city and county.
Still though, you have to wonder if a cash-strapped council that is currently trying to figure out how to come up with the funds to keep the handful of public toilets they have currently open in the city centre running next year, has the cash or will to get behind a significant public works project such as putting an outdoor pool back in the River Lee, and quite possibly within shouting distance of City Hall?
Niall says that in his conversations with bureaucrats from the city council the signs are positive. Right up to the executive council level, they are, to use a maritime metaphor, rowing in behind the lido.
But he doesn’t imagine the council actually running the lido; rather it would be contracted out to a services company, or “if push comes to shove we could put a committee together to do the management side if they (the city council) feel they don’t have someone who will take on the management.”
When I ask Niall the crunch question if he has a ballpark figure of how much money a lido could cost to construct, he answers with a long, hearty laugh. It’s the kind of “I knew you were going to ask me this question” laugh.
He talks around the figure for a small while, telling me it depends on what you want etc., before he pivots to the cost of the National Aquatic Centre (€62 million), before he gets to the meat: €10 million.
But bear in mind, this is just a guesstimate, and no money has been allocated. In fact at this stage nothing has been allocated or sanctioned or signed off.
As Niall points out, it’s a figure that could go up or down, and it depends on the facilities, but as he says “it’s still going to be streets away from what was spent at the Aqua Dome, in half the time and less than a third of the cost.”
“For the city it’s a no-brainer.”
If and when it comes, Niall thinks that to use the Lee lido you’ll need to pay in.
“I would like it to be next to free, but I think the days of anything free are long gone across sport.”
As we often do when reaching for price comparisons, Niall compares the likely entrance fee price to a cup of coffee, and “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
A hard sell?
The only part of our interview where Niall’s tone changed was when I ask him if it would be a hard sell convincing people in Cork to go swimming in the Lee, given that the vast majority of us have never so much as dipped a toe in there. At least until the Lee lido comes along.
“No,” Niall says, testiness in his voice.
“If you look at what the last 18 months have shown is that open water swimming and outdoor swimming has experienced a huge uptake.”
By example, Niall refers to the reservoir at Iniscarra Dam, where he says that on any given morning or evening there’s always a group of swimmers out there.
“The idea that we’re all restricted to indoor pools is gone by the wayside.”
He also points to the popularity of the annual Lee swims, which attract hundreds of swimmers each year.
Still though, just as you wonder if people in Cork will power through and happily stay eating and drinking outdoors through the winter months - and that’s just sitting down having a tea or coffee - will people tog off and get into the Lee down at the Marina on a cold, dark morning in February?
While Niall says he retreats indoors to the pool for the long winter months, he also says there’s plenty of other swimmers who take to the open water all year round. And, Christmas Day seems to bring out the swimmer in plenty of people. Even if it’s only for a few moments.
Both Boston and Copenhagen have eight lidos a piece Niall says. And they also have far colder winters.
Within Niall’s own extended family (“my in-laws and outlaws”) four of them have taken up outdoor swimming. Ten years ago they would never have thought about it or attempted it he said.
“It’s a wetsuit, towel and a set of goggles. It’s 50% cheaper than a set of golf clubs and you don’t have to worry about membership.”
At at this point Niall is well into his sales pitch, and while I imagine he’s given this spiel quite a few times, he’s a believer. Clearly.
“It’s an activity that everyone from three year olds to the eighty three year olds can take part in. You have a broad spectrum that will take the opportunity if the lido is there and it will be a busy spot, especially if it’s in the city centre.”
As he says, the Cork lido Facebook page has more than 1400 members, if virtual followers are anything to go by.
At one point in our interview, Niall gets into the technical side of how a lido would be constructed. One option would be to have piles driven into the ground, and a frame would be put in place around them. Niall mentions a lido in Helsinki, that he likes, which has a floating deck and a heated pool.
“It’s a stunning set up and it’s open all year round. It just shows what’s possible.”
But even if the eventual Lee lido was far more rudimentary, there is something romantic and urbane about an outdoor pool a few minutes walk from the city centre where swimmers would work through their laps while beyond the lanes, crews from Naomhóga Chorcaí or Blackrock Rowing club would glide past in curraghs and sculls. And maybe even a few bucks with their fishing rods, casting for mackerel off the Clontarf Bridge?
Is this all just wishful thinking? Or it is possible under the re-imagined Cork, to use the zeitgeist phrase of the moment?
As Niall told me it’s not just Cork where the outdoor pools are gaining currency. In Dublin, there’s a group trying to get a lido in St George’s Quay. Another group in Fenit, Co. Kerry are trying to restore a sea pool, and a group in the Shannon estuary are also looking to do similar.
What has the America’s Cup got to with the lido?
“That would be fabulous,” Niall says unequivocally when I ask him for his thoughts on Cork securing the yacht race for 2024.
“I wholeheartedly agree that this America’s Cup would be a huge benefit to this city in the long term.”
The way Niall sees it, and he’s not wide of the mark here, is that councils need a reason to do things. The America’s Cup would be a big reason.
“The default, when you ask for something, is ‘we have no money’”, Niall says explaining how projects do and don’t get off the ground at council level.
Take pontoons. Niall says if you were to ask nicely of the city or county council, to put more of them in the harbour, for boats, for swimmers, you’re unlikely to succeed.
With the America’s Cup, Niall says you’re putting a gun to their head, “by having a half billion revenue generating machine turning up on your doorstep.
“I think having that particular gun to your heard will be huge for the city if it does come off.”
Niall recalls the time the Tall Ships came to Cork in the 1990s. “That was phenomenal. It would live on and be remembered,” he says if the America’s Cup were to come to Cork.
The way Niall sees it is that the America’s Cup is the catalyst to open the spigot and get spending going on infrastructure in the harbour. And for a harbour city, some of our maritime infrastructure is, well, non existent.
In preparing for Niall’s swim to Cobh last month, his crew of helpers were scouting out where they could launch a boat that would trail behind him.
Bear in mind that he started out in the city down by Kennedy Quay, but the nearest slip way they could find to launch the boat was in the Lee Rowing club, down in Marina. And that slip way is private property.
“Other than that you’re going down to Monkstown, or Crosshaven or Cobh and coming back up.”
“We’re a city on an estuary and a harbour with no city access, it’s just…it beggars belief that it got to that stage to be fair.”
“If you have the America’s Cup come in it means you have to build your services, you have to build facilities, you have build access to the water. And that can only be a good thing.”
Looking backwards, and forwards
Talk of a lido in Cork invariably brings you back to the baths on the Lee Fields, but Niall doesn’t dwell on nostalgia, which never built anything.
As he says the Eighties, which was when the baths fell into disrepair was a time of retrenchment and cost cutting right across the country.
“Now is the time to take advantage of the ever-increasing interest in swimming.” As he points out it’s the second fastest growing sport in Ireland, and while he acknowledges it will never overtake or even take on GAA, but then again “they get 10 times the funding.”
“The interest in the water is huge,” Niall says, adding how there is a surge in interest in rowing and sailing. And with increased interest in swimming leading to waiting lists at swimming pools across the city and county. Perhaps given a year like no other in living memory, much of which was spent indoors, that’s understandable.
Cork has undoubtedly changed in a short space of time. Pedestrians and cyclists are finding that the city is increasingly making a space for them.
It’s a tall order, and takes imagination, but at least one man Cork man has convinced himself that the Lee is a perfect space for swimming. Now he just needs to convince others to take the plunge with him.
This made my day!
Great idea and what an amazing facility for cork if it happens